Ethos Pathos Logos In Pearl Harbor Speech

It has been said that it only takes one person, with one clear message, to change the world. In times of war, great world leaders have put this statement to the test, which each word spoken calling for an act of war or an act of peace. In Thomas Paine’s The Crisis No. 1, Paine is addressing the impending Revolutionary War, and the impending battle against General Howe. Similarly, in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation, the President asks the American people to stand with him against the Japanese and join World War II. Both speeches call out to the American people to fight and protect their nation using facts and hard truths to persuade, while both Paine and Roosevelt use their own levels of personal connection and feelings

Thomas Paine’s The Crisis does an excellent job of exemplifying the usage of the colonist’s feelings prominently in the content. One of Paine’s purposes in writing such a pamphlet is to convince the colonial Americans that they must not be cowardly by supporting British rule. Throughout his pamphlet, this ideal is displayed in an extremely pronounced manner, with a considerable example in the first paragraph: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will… shrink from the service of this country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of every man and woman.” (Paine 331). He attempts to instill a sense of self realization and motivation in those who have not joined with the revolutionaries, to receive respect and admiration by doing so. To finish out, Paine tries to identify with the reader in the middle of his pamphlet, saying that he “once felt all that kind of anger… against the mean principles that are held by the tories,” (Paine 334). He goes on to explain that he didn’t only feel that anger, he did something about it, like everyone else should. His usage of emotion and feeling is paramount to his claims and, without them, he would not be as persuasive as he is. On the contrary, Roosevelt, in his Pearl Harbor Address to the Nation, almost never uses pathos to persuade his audience, but uses ethos in order to show the people of America why they should fight for their country. Using his authority and knowledge of the American government and the conflict at hand, Roosevelt speaks for the American people from his high station, declaring, “I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make it very certain that this form